Winterstar: One Year After – 00

15 Neyavr Uktar

Dear Aerthrandir:

I write primarily to inform you of my new mailing address. Meriada Tornsail is currently a guest-resident at Estelmer Villa, Vhezoar Street, North Ward, Waterdeep. Any letters you attempt to send to my parents’ residence in Korinton henceforth will not reach me, nor will missives sent here addressed to the wrong person.

That done, however, there appears to be so much space left on this page that I may as well fill it.

The nightmares have finally stopped. Or at least, there have been none for some time now. Do you know, He never appeared in any of them, not once. It was always bats, wolves, great stinking monstrosities, fire, for months and months. Father said he had seen this sort of thing before, a kind of extended state of shock that could last for years and decades after someone had already been removed from the source of danger.

“Years” and “decades” are unacceptable to me. We did not bring back the sun just so that we could lose the light ourselves.

So I decided to make my fears small and pitiful. I went out looking for every farmer within three days’ ride who had reported wolves attacking their livestock, and I slew dozens of wolves, until the sight of them withering under my hands was fresher and more real than the memory of their fangs. I ridded several old shrines in the deep forest of the living rotting heaps that infested them. I found a cave, not so far away, where thousands of bats roost, and I did not even need to kill them. I just walked, and watched them flee before me with every step.

I cannot make fire fear me.

I hired one of Father’s mages to send fire at me so that I could practice snuffing it out before it reached me. It was – a very short session.

But the nightmares have stopped, nevertheless. For now.

I am presently in Waterdeep for business, of course. But I have also heard that the City of Splendors has many curious artifacts and pieces of old magic to offer, and it is also true that House Estelmer has a particular fondness for the search for esoteric lore. Compared to their usual interests, “some kind of perpetual ward against fire” is too prosaic to trouble them about directly. But I am making good use of their excellent private library. You would like this library, I am sure.

(If you have any knowledge related to this particular matter, I am of course always interested in your insight.)

I hope you are doing well, and that, historian that you are, you are only dwelling on the parts of the past that you wish to.

Sincerely,

Meriada L. Tornsail

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Vitality: 2 ◦ Quickness: 5 ◦ Fortitude: 4

Winterstar: One Year After is the epistolary epilogue of Lilissen Winterstar, written with Her Odyssey. Updates every Sunday.